Internet users process and view enormous amounts of electronic information on a daily basis. Moreover, the information may be dynamic and constantly changing. Typically, content associated with the information is presented within World-Wide Web (WWW) browsers, instant messaging (IM) clients, chat rooms, electronic mail (email) systems, word processing editors, image viewers, etc. Whenever a user exits an application (normally or abnormally), the user can potentially lose context associated with information that the user is working with from within a document. This is especially problematic for chat rooms where if an original window is closed or a conversation within a chat room goes too long, it becomes difficult for a user to restore information which originally existed on his/her display screen.
WWW browsers provide bookmark features which permit documents associated with a browser to be recovered on demand. However, with a bookmark the document associated with the bookmark has to be compatible with a WWW browser. Furthermore, the bookmark generally only identifies the document; it does not provide a link to specific location within the document. Additionally, the bookmarks have to be accessed and consumed within the WWW browser; meaning that the bookmarks are dependent upon the WWW browser application. Finally, the bookmarks of one user are not easily shared and/or synchronized with bookmarks of another user. In essence bookmark sharing is a manual process which is limited to tools provided by a particular browser. Also, manual synchronization of shared bookmarks has to occur every time a bookmark changes; and as a practical matter bookmark changes occur frequently.
Other applications, such as email word processing, etc. may also provide bookmark features. These features suffer from the same limitations as WWW browser bookmarks. Thus, conventionally provided bookmarks are useful only within the applications that provide them, do not permit access to specific locations within documents, and do not permit sharing and synchronization of bookmarks across multiple users.
Accordingly, improved techniques for content marking are needed.